


Help Me

by SunWeaver



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Blood, Buried Alive, Creepy, Death, Gen, Horror, Insects, Not Beta Read, Open Ending, Supernatural Elements, Vomiting, dead bodies, light gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:20:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27065521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SunWeaver/pseuds/SunWeaver
Summary: (Spoilers in tags)Driving in the dark through rain is the last thing Caduceus really wanted. One or the other was fine enough, but why did it have to be both?After a trip with friends, Caduceus returns home to resume his day-to-day life. Only, something strange comes home with him on that drive back.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 22





	Help Me

**Author's Note:**

> Somehow I decided I wanted to attempt a light horror narrative. Maybe it is more just creepy? I don’t know if I achieved even that.
> 
> Baby’s first horror fic, not really going to make these a reoccurring thing I do. But it’s Halloween season! So have a taste.

He stays painfully aware of the bends and curves of this country road while barely pushing 15 miles per hour. Sheets of rain would come down between the gaps of the trees that sprouted on either sides of the road, and the windshield wipers cranked at their fastest speed to keep the image ahead from being blurred and warped.

This is the true price he would have to pay for deciding so late in the day to drive homeward. Despite sleep starting to creep up on him by his half suppressed yawns, he knew that a bed was waiting for him, he was only a couple more minutes away from it as he passed the old spring house along the road…

Then, that’s when the headlights caught something.

Caduceus’s toe pressed onto the brake pedal, where his foot had already been hovering. And yet, he still needed to push down fully in order to stop the car with merely a couple feet between the car’s grille and the drenched person walking along the road.

There’s hesitation as Caduceus looks at this hunching individual. Their clothes clung to their arms and hair matted down their face, mud caked on their backside, and they hugged their own body in a futile attempt at keeping out the chill from the autumn night air.

This person, whoever they were, turned to face him. Their eyes crimson red orbs. Curled horns on either side of their head. Clothes ragged, a tear exposes their shoulder and the sleeve hangs loose. Their expression shows disorientation.

Caduceus pushes open the car door and steps out, “ _Ah_ — Hello?” He calls to them, voice wavering as to try and not spook them.

After a moment of those eyes staring blankly back at Caduceus, he takes it upon himself to lean back over the driver’s seat and grab his coat that was carelessly bunched up in the passenger seat, pulling it out and coming around to this stranger.

“Are you OK?” Caduceus lifts the coat to drape over their shoulders, they don’t seem to flinch or shy away from him, “Do you need help?”

“ _..hel..m..._ ”

The rain pelting the ground only further obscured what this person was muttering under their breath.

“I’m sorry, you’re going to need to speak up,” Caduceus insists, “Do you need medical assistance? You can nod.”

Their gaze was distant, facing the trees on the side of the road, but they shook their head.

Caduceus is puzzled, he looks over their body for other clues. They were barefoot, along with mud there seemed to be some other stains that came down their shirt and even on the thighs of their pants, and the most disconcerting was the blood that seemed to be stained around their shoulder. When Caduceus moved around them to inspect, they saw that their ear lobe appeared torn and had bled.

“I really think you should be seen by a doctor,” Caduceus winces, “If not for your ear, you seem unwell.”

“ _No_ ,” croaks the stranger.

Caduceus grimaces, though he worries about how compliant they would stay with him if he tries to drive them to a clinic. Instead, he will have to settle for the second best.

“I live not too far from here, can I bring you home and help you there?” Caduceus offers.

They look up at him, after a conflicted pause, they nod.

After both have stood out here to both be sufficiently soaked now, Caduceus leads the stranger to the passenger side door. The upholstery of the seats was the least of his concerns. For now, he made sure they were sat in, buckled, and that the warm fan blew directly at them. Hurrying back around, Caduceus climbs into the driver’s side again and slams his door shut, shifting the car back into drive before continuing down the road.

In those minutes between the spot in the road and to the house, the stranger was stoically quiet. Staring down along the line where the dashboard and windshield met. Not really focused, and slowly leaning forward bit by bit, only to right themself and sit up.

The familiar gravel driveway crunches underneath the wheels of Caduceus’s car, as it pulls in just behind one of the other several cars in the driveway. One of the cars present was one Caduceus had hoped to see. _Aunt Corrin_. The time read off the car radio said 1:02 AM, late but there might be a chance that waking Corrin up might not be as risky as catching her before lying down to bed for the night.

“Here we are,” Caduceus announces as he pulls the keys out from the car and gets out to come around to the passenger’s side, “Let me help you inside—“

When he opens the door, offering a hand to the stranger.

The seat is empty.

* * *

The morning comes with little fanfare, Caduceus had seemingly slipped in the house and got to bed wholly undetected. So for breakfast, as mom and dad worked together at the stove, Clarabelle sat at the table with a bowl of cereal made for herself, and Aunt Corrin sitting with her as she enjoyed some tea, Caduceus casually strolls into the room and takes a seat at the table.

“Breakfast is smelling so good!” Caduceus announces across the room.

Clarabelle is startled up from her cereal, blinking in utter bafflement at Caduceus. Both parents look over their shoulders with surprise as well. Corrin seems the most entertained as she laughs.

“Caduceus!! When did you get here??” Clarabelle gets up to come around and hug his shoulders.

“Last night,” Caduceus leaned his head to her shoulder, patting her arms, “Surprised you weren’t up, it was only an hour passed midnight.”

“I have a proper sleep schedule now, thank you very much,” Clarabelle let him go as she sits back down.

“Oh Caduceus,” Their mother, Constance, glides over to pull Caduceus into a hug as well, “It’s so good to see you home! You had us worried!”

“I’m sorry about that,” Caduceus admits sheepishly, “I didn’t leave until after 5, and then it rained, so it made the drive only longer.”

A kiss is pressed to the crown of his head, before Constance lets go of him, “How would you like your eggs? Sunny side up or scrambled?”

“Sunny side, please,” Caduceus requests, hand slipping away from her back as she walks back to the stove.

“Good to know you were careful about the drive,” Their father, Cornelius, comments, “Too many accidents happen on these roads in this weather. It rains, then the temperature drops so and suddenly the roads are icy!”

Caduceus props his elbows onto the table as he looks between Clarabelle and Corrin, “Colton and Calliope already leave for work?”

“That they have,” Corrin speaks up first, “But Calliope usually arrives home before Colton, it depends on how busy the clinic gets for Colton.”

For a moment, Caduceus is caught by that word, _clinic_. Well aware how his brother works there as a nurse, but it reminds him of the strange occurrence that happened last night. Still baffled by it, he’s thoroughly convinced that it had been a dream. Running on fumes at that last stretch of driving, everything blurred in a strange haze and he imagined that once coming inside he collapsed into his bed and didn’t care much more than to kick his shoes off by the bedroom door.

* * *

The rain is a light shower compared to the buckets that poured out last night, Caduceus goes out to his car and opens the black door. Clarabelle is following him in tow, taking his backpack to sling over her shoulder and carry up to the house while he grabs his suitcase to carry back inside with him.

Bringing his things back into his bedroom, Caduceus unzips the luggage and works to put away his clothes.

“How was the trip?” Clarabelle asks as she sits on his bed.

“Refreshing,” Caduceus says as he carries folded clothes to his dresser, “Felt nice to get a break away from home and work. And we had a lot of fun up there at the cabin.”

Clarabelle lies down on Caduceus’s bed as he talks, “How’s a cabin in the woods any different than home?”

“Well, for one, I’m not around Colton,” Caduceus teases, getting a giggle out of Clarabelle, “And there’s less utilities to a cabin. We had to actually burn wood in a fireplace to keep warm.”

Clarabelle listens on as Caduceus describes his stay with friends, there is a point in his talking she has to sit up again and looks to his bed, more specifically, the place in bed he slept in at.

“Hey Caduceus?”

He looks over his shoulder from his closet, “Yes, Belle?”

“Why’s your bed all wet?”

He’s then puzzled, walking over to the bed, and noticing for himself a damp shadowing of what appears like his body, “Oh, I got pretty much drenched last night from the rain. It was a real downpour.”

Clarabelle then stands up, looking over his bed and to the head of it, at the pillow, which is where her eyes stop at.

Caduceus spots her fixed gaze, looking over himself to then spot that on his pillow, there is a dark brown blotching there in the middle of the pillow. He frowns, walking over and picking it up to look more closely at it.

“What is that?” Clarabelle asks.

Caduceus doesn’t immediately answer her back, instead, he touches his own ear, then the other, both times pulling his hand back to look at his fingertips.

“Huh, odd,” Caduceus mutters as he sets the pillow back down, flipped over to the clear side, “Must be an old pillowcase.”

* * *

The Blooming Grove provides a number of funerary services, keeping up with traditional styled funerals as well as offering more natural options. Caduceus saw it often as his mother handling traditional styles with embalmings and cremations, while his father helmed naturalistic styles where he even built biodegradable coffins and used a loom to create burial shrouds. Caduceus often worked between the two of them, with some quiet acknowledgement that one day he would helm both departments himself.

“I’m meeting with a new family at 2 about funeral arrangements for their grandmother,” Constance says while clipping back short strands of hair from her face, “Could I get you to take over Mr. Treesnow’s cremation?”

Caduceus stood in the doorway of his parents’ bedroom, and gave a nod, “Can do.”

After sharing air kisses, Constance threw on a cardigan and left while Caduceus went to get himself dressed.

It was still cloudy out, threatening to rain again. As Caduceus drove along that curving road, coming near the spring house off the side again, he took a moment to slow down…

Nothing amiss stood in the road, with an overcast sky, there weren’t too many obscuring shadows. Dark pockets between the trees were just as muted as the rest. No signs of people as this was seldom a portion of the road that even joggers would bother to trek down.

Had to have been a dream or the delirious thoughts of someone nearly close to collapsing from hours of driving.

Eventually, Caduceus arrived at the funeral home. Where he stepped out and walked up onto the porch. Some found this place eerie, “ _they keep dead bodies in there_ ” kids would whisper to one another passing by on the school bus. But Caduceus saw it just like a second home. The _dead bodies_ kept within it typically did not stay for long, unlike what the children would suggest when thinking this building, positioned next to a graveyard, would house and contain bodies under the floorboards and in the walls.

As he waited for the body to arrive, he heard gentle thunder roll outside the window, and to his astonishment, the rain was returning. What a pleasant sound to fill an otherwise starkly quiet building.

Not too long after, the body, within its shut container, is brought in by the hospital staff. Caduceus spends a brief moment at the front foyer to go through the necessary paperwork and identification forms. And once this is sorted, the staff leave the body within the back room for Caduceus to carry out his work.

He stops just outside the door to properly wash his hands and put on a pair of gloves, Mr. Treesnow’s wife wants for his ring to be kept in the urn, otherwise there was nothing else requested of the Clays to remove.

Caduceus walks across the room to the container, pulling along with him a small table tray that has some tools and the identification tag to go along with the body. He lifts the lid, and then stills as he looks to the body.

Purple skin, caked in mud, soaking wet and red eyes fully open and staring back up at him.

Caduceus’s muscles tense, staring back at them. At that _stranger_. Eyes dart over them, and notice that just over their shoulders is… His coat.

Then. The eyes blink at him.

Caduceus jumps back, startled and alarmed as he backs away. And the person sure enough sits up from the container, staring the whole time.

“ _H-how did—_ “ Caduceus shudders out, back hitting the door and his hand fumbles behind to find the handle.

“ _Hhelp…_ ” The stranger groans, pulling themself out from the container, nails like long talons.

Caduceus is pressed against the door, as he slips open the knob, he falls back into the hallway onto his back. Scrambling quickly to back away.

And yet, the moment he looks back into the room at the open door.

They’re gone.

…

Caduceus feels his heart racing. He can hear the thumping in his ears. His breathing was still shallow breaths as he felt a full blown panic take him. And yet, the only other sounds now aside from his own breathing was the gentle rain that pitter pattered on the window.

Finding his footing, he cautiously approaches the room, head ducking through the doorway first to look to and fro for any sign of that stranger. Then, he walks over to the container.

There lies Mr. Treesnow, and there around his shoulders is Caduceus’s coat.

* * *

“You have no fever,” Corrin says looking at the thermometer she pulled from Caduceus’s ear, “Did you hit your head after you fell?”

“I don’t think so,” Caduceus reaches up to touch the back of his head, looking for any tender spots, “I hadn’t noticed if I did.”

“But you saw something strange _before_ you fell?”

Caduceus hums, hand splaying across the back of his head, fingers weaving through his hair. No soreness or lumps from what he could tell, “And I only fell because I tripped, not from any loss of consciousness I don’t _think_.”

Corrin is pensive, “... I wouldn’t rule out seeing a doctor, just because nothing _appears_ wrong on the surface, doesn’t mean you might not still have something else going on.”

He grimaces at the thought, but if he couldn’t explain this by medical means… “I’ll ask Colton when he gets home tonight, see if any doctors at the clinic can take me in.”

That appeals to Corrin, as he then gets up from the couch and walks back to his bedroom. He looks at his bed again, picking up the pillow and flipping it over. That stain remained, but he slept on the clean side and there was no stain there this time.

It was perplexing, and yet, there was one odd thing that Caduceus remembers noting… That stranger’s ear was torn. As though an earring had been violently pulled and left the lobe cut in two. For the way that Caduceus sleeps in bed, on his side, his ear is pressed down against the pillow.

He takes another chance to go to the mirror and examine his own ear. He already showered sometime between the morning discovering the stain and now, and he slept with the pillow to the same ear he usually sleeps on. In the mirror he tries to squint and examine his own ear for any flecks of dried blood or even if his own piercing was starting to tear and bleed.

Nothing with his usual floppy ear was amiss.

Caduceus tries to worry himself more of the possibility that something was wrong with his own head than ever suspect something else was going awry.

* * *

Colton gives Caduceus a hard time when he asks about seeing one of the clinic doctors tomorrow, as though to belittle the fact that Caduceus’s _hallucinations_ could be resolved if he just got more sleep.

After some insistence and the threat of bringing Aunt Corrin into this, Colton concedes begrudgingly. Caduceus is left annoyed by how blasé Colton is towards his concerns. It wasn’t often he would get this concerned, but the lack of rational explanation has led him to desperation in trying to comprehend it all.

And yet, how could he ever justify his coat on Mr. Treesnow’s shoulders. When he picked up the article of clothing, it was very real. When he brought it home and put it in the wash, it was real. And when he hung it up on the back of his bedroom door, there it was. Hanging there in plain view from where he lie in bed.

Did he hallucinate that too? Maybe the coat was just in his car. Though that didn’t explain where it was the morning that Clarabelle helped him bring his bags in. Did she ever mention his coat missing??

Caduceus closes his eyes tightly shut, painfully willing away these insistent thoughts. Instead, he took the time now to keep his eyes shut, and breathe evenly. Restoring his mind to a peaceful state. Tomorrow he would visit the clinic and from there they could help to ascertain whether this was physical, or maybe even refer him out if this was looking psychological.

With eyes closed, he eases into sleep, face relaxing, breathing slowing, body sinking into the mattress, and blanket enveloping his body warmly.

In the darkness behind his eyelids, colors and shapes began to form. Dull and dark, hard to consciously comprehend. His mind slipping into dreams of his subconscious.

Then, something formed.

Standing on a gravel trail, Caduceus’s feet were bare, feeling every rock and pebble that he stood on. They were jagged, uneven, even sharp. Deciding it was too much to withstand, he quickly walks off into the grass. This path cuts through a clearing here in the trees. And within this clearing, there is a mound of dirt.

_This isn’t a usual place we bury_ , Caduceus thinks aloud.

Then comes the rain. And as it rains, it pours.

The water is cold, and the howling wind breaks against his body with icy flecks from the chilly autumn night. When Caduceus looks to the sky, it is pitch dark.

The water pelts down against the mound, and the dirt becomes mud. It slowly melts away and in the ground, Caduceus sees skin. Lilac in coloration. Scars adorn the forearm under colorful tattoos of dull roses and a serpent weaved throughout them.

As Caduceus watches, the mud washes away more and more, as it reveals to him… Them. The stranger.

Eyes wide open, staring up to the sky. Blood dried around their mouth as it had poured from their nostrils. And just as Caduceus takes one step back, their face snaps directly at him.

He trips and stumbles as he runs, the grass is suddenly too wet and slippery for him to run along. So he climbs back onto the gravel path. The gravel is like shards of glass that cut his hands and knees, but Caduceus can stand and he runs.

He’s running through trees that bend and curve, forming a tunnel around this gravel path. It is narrowing and funneling to the point where he must fall to his knees and crawl. Sharp shards tear at his clothes, and just as Caduceus is crawling through on his stomach, awful scratches down his chest and abdomen. There’s an exit.

Caduceus climbs out and comes to standing again. The gravel is now smooth, and looking at it again, it’s pavement. He looks back the way he came, spotting the old spring house.

Then there are headlights, and Caduceus can’t will his legs to move him out of the way.

  
  


He wakes with a sharp gasp.

* * *

It was like he was on autopilot. Not bothering to change from his sleep clothes as he throws on his coat and pulls on his shoes, grabbing his keys, he marches through the quiet home. It’s 3 in the morning, everyone is sleeping soundly. And as he passes through the kitchen, he pauses at the drawer where they kept their utensils: forks, spoons, and knives.

Opening the drawer, he pulls out a serrated knife.

His finger tests the sharpness of the tip, not pressing enough to draw blood, but knowing full well if he pressed any harder it was possible by how the pad of his finger pinched uncomfortably.

In that instance, he was genuinely horrified by the true intentions behind his thought process, and immediately drops the knife back in, shutting the drawer.

_What am I going to do?_ Caduceus questions himself.

He tries to convince himself out of this, going to the kitchen sink to grab a cup from the drain board and fill it with some water. Standing here, he could look out the window and see the droplets of rain that clung to the glass. Trickling down and streaking the image through it of the moonlit driveway.

_If I find a body, what should I do?_

Report it to the authorities? And how was he to reasonably explain finding it? _A midnight walk_? Caduceus was not too entirely focused on what might happen to himself, he knew he was not guilty for putting that body in the ground… But who was?

That is. **_If_ ** there’s a body. And **_if_ ** there’s a crime.

_What if… They’re alive?_

Setting the cup back into the sink, Caduceus pulls his keys from his pocket and walks out the door.

Rather than pass by the spring house, Caduceus pulls into the gravel path that travels along it, sloping up into a hill. Taking a flashlight, Caduceus steps out of the car and follows the path. The gravel is not nearly as monstrously jagged as his dream made it out to be. _The images were still so vivid in his mind._ He felt a rising panic of claustrophobia even though the trees surrounding were spaced far apart and erected high, towards the sky.

He had to just take it one step at a time, walking slow and careful with his eyes focused on the lit ground. The rain was cold, chilled further by the night breeze. It did not howl through the trees in a frightening manner like his dream. Branches sway and leaves rustled. Some of the wet leaves even broke off and blew across the path ahead.

The scope of what he could see was obscured several feet out beyond the light of the flashlight. Though as Caduceus lifts the handle, it dissolves into the inky darkness. Catching on a few obstacles. As Caduceus waves it around, he realizes that he’s reached a clearing. The clearing.

With a moment of trepidation, Caduceus steps into the grass. There is a squish of mud underneath, sodden by the days of rain.

And then he sees it. The mound.

And Caduceus’s throat clenched as he sees a color separate from the dull dirt.

_What am I going to do?_ His mind laments.

With his phone tucked into his pocket of the coat, Caduceus decides against reaching for it. His feet move him towards the mound.

Hair wet and strands stuck closely to his cheeks and chin. Hand trembling as his jaw clenched so tight his teeth hurt. His eyes refused to blink, wanting to not lose sight of this for even a half second. Though, as he approaches, his eyes forcibly blink, several many times. And yet, it remained. That hand.

Caduceus was breathing heavy, body stock still.

_Twitch_.

Caduceus blinks.

_Curl_.

The fingers. They’re flexing. The mud around, there are claw marks.

_Hhh…_

There’s a muffled sound.

Caduceus’s breath catches, listening more intently, and watching in terror.

_Hhhh…_

_Scratch_.

_Mm_ …

_Fingers tremble to stretch out_.

_Hhhe_ …

_Nails dig into the dirt, knuckles protrude_.

_Me_ …

Caduceus drops down to his knees, shoving fingers into the mud, grabbing handfuls of earth to toss to the sides of the mound. The flashlight is dropped to the side, facing away as he digs furiously at the ground. His mind in a total haze, as he is pushing and shoving the dirt away. The hand is attached to a forearm. Tattoos of roses and a serpent intertwined throughout. Leading to a sleeve which eventually has a tear at the shoulder.

The hand grabs at Caduceus’s sleeve.

He grabs the arm. It is cold… And yet… There was some strange warmth.

_They’re alive._

He pulls, and there’s a muffled grunt. He digs through the dirt more, following up the shoulder, hand hitting something solid. He pulls again.

There is a horn. Then hair. Then a face. Then a horrid wheeze, followed by a whine as this body seems to struggle out a noise.

Caduceus grabs their shirt, pulling them out of the packed earth and try to sit them up. Their nails start to dig into his forearm as he holds them and pulls them out further.

They hunch forward, and finally wrench disgustingly onto the ground. Mud. Worms. They heave out, their voice coming to some clarity now. In this silent forest, they make an awful bellowing groan, followed quickly by a shrieking inhale. They are fighting with their own body to breathe.

Caduceus sees their ear torn. It is hard to tell if it is blood or mud that drenches their shirt.

Fear has Caduceus’s nerves frayed, he cannot do much more than watch this person suffer in trying to do something as simple as breathe. They continue to gag, cough, until finally, their shivering body falls against Caduceus.

They both sit there. Unmoving.

“.. _help..me_..” The stranger goes limp into Caduceus’s arms.

  
  


The sun is the first thing to greet the dawn. Rain has come to pass, allowing for the light to glisten off the blades of grass and begin to warm the earth drenched by water and frost.


End file.
